forma: Productions > Current > Ryoji Ikeda – data.spectra

Produced by forma
Commissioned by Australian Centre for Moving Image, Melbourne

Ryoji Ikeda’s new body of works, datamatics explores the aesthetic potentials of data by using data itself – from its transparency to materiality, from its ultra-speed to hyper-diffusion. The project derives the hidden constants of data-ness from the vast data ocean that ranges from DNA and the everyday world to the universe and pure mathematics.

The data.series is a differentiation of datamatics; sub-projects are each named as ‘data.xxxx’. These ‘data.’ parts comprise installations, CD, publications, and possibly film, DVD and scientific research.

data.spectra is the first work of the data.series. Across the entire width of a darkened room is an intensely bright, narrow screen. On moving closer, the screen reveals that the source of the flood of light into the room is a vast array of tiny digits streaming across the surface, seemingly without end. The projection is accompanied by a high frequency stereo sound work by Ikeda, filling the viewing space.

C4I is an integration of the 7 key ‘data.’ parts. Its characteristic lies in the continuum of a hyper-dense split second, the function is performed as an audiovisual concert piece with constant updates. It touches the threshold of one’s perception and recognition, and is experienced at selected theatre spaces across the world.

“The breathtaking data.spectra is a four-lane superhighway of numbers streaming in a dense band across one of the walls of a vast darkened room. It’s a runaway flow of code, resembling the delirious output of a stock exchange news caster.”
– Edward Colless, The Australian, 26 aug 05